Marketing implications

The marketing research showed that there are several opportunities for an air-line to meet, or even exceed the expectations of its passengers, with aid of its sustainable marketing-mix. Furthermore, to find ways how to enhance the

“spill-over effect” that implies to extending PEB also to affect the airline passen-gers purchasing behavior regarding their air travel could help an airline like Finnair to differentiate by promoting their environmental responsibility.

This study could not specify a green airline passenger with demographic fac-tors, such as age or gender. Both factors were context dependent and there was

some significant variation within the different demographic groups. Overall, females were found more environmentally conscious than males. In general, it can also be said that that respondent’s PEB increased with age. However, it is good to acknowledge that the elderly airline passengers’ preference to fly with modern fleet was higher than the younger ones, thus it caused a significant in-crease in the scores associated with PEB for the benefit of the elder. Also within large sample size even small variations in the population become easily statisti-cally significant.

6.3.1 Customer solution and communication

Finnair should develop an effective campaign to raise awareness about environ-mentally responsible flying in the Swedish market and inform them about the airline’s eco-efficiency, as well as about the efforts Finnair does to further im-prove it. As the study showed, there is still plenty of work to do to acquire cus-tomers from the Swedish market by promoting Finnair as the modern and eco-efficient alternative to fly to over 10 destinations in Asia. Thus, the company should make efforts to persuade new customers to use the services and reassure those having tried the service that they made an eco-smart purchasing decision.

In sustainability communication a special emphasis should be set on motivating them towards “green behavior” and rewarding them about it. A loyalty program is an efficient platform for this purpose offering a number of ways to reward customers of their PEB. Finnair should place an extra effort developing their FFP in Sweden and recruit more members to it.

The company seems to have two salient messages to use as a platform for the Ecosmart marketing campaign: the new eco-efficient A350 XWB aircraft en-tering the fleet in fall 2015 and being the first European airline to have a certi-fied EMS especially designed for airlines by IATA (IEnvA Program). The main message should be built around the fact that the most environmentally sustain-able act from an airline is to fly with a modern eco-efficient fleet. The new A350 XWB offers a powerful tool for this with its superior eco-performance compared to its predecessors. Communicating about the EMS, in turn, would tell the story about how the airline manages its environmental issues in a systematic and co-herent manner by pursuing continuous improvement in environmental sustain-ability. In addition, Finnair should not forget to communicate about the fact that by taking the shortest route from Northern Europe to North East Asia with on their flights, airline passengers can significantly reduce their carbon foot-print from flying compared to many other airlines.

As earlier stated in this study, the influence of descriptive and injunctive norms play an important role when encouraging consumers to adapt PEB.

There are several possibilities how Finnair could influence these norms in their marketing efforts. Probably the most powerful way would be to involve a cred-ible and recognized Swedish spokesman in a marketing campaign. Publishing blogs and encouraging bloggers to write about the environmentally responsible air travel would be an effective channel as well as blogs are about grouping and belonging. Articles in the inflight magazine and inflight videos could effectively provide more detailed information on the earlier mentioned main messages.

For a backbone of its environmental responsibility, Finnair should contin-ue providing environmental disclosure for its stakeholders in order to build trust and communicate about the progress of its environmental performance. It should also establish a network where to conduct open sustainability dialogue with its stakeholders.

6.3.2 Customer convenience and cost

The results that referred to airline passengers intention to purchase when offering direct flight route showed that intention to fly with Finnair would increase the most, out of all the airlines included in this study, in case they could offer direct flights from the destinations where the airline passenger is intending to travel from. This implies to promoting the fast, uncongested and convenient connec-tions via Helsinki. Finnair could grow their market share in Sweden by convinc-ing the Swedish air travellers how their flights with modern fleet and fresh cab-in cab-interiors to Asia brcab-ing added convenience and ease to the traveler. This pro-posal would be based on Finnair’s extensive route network and geographically optimal location for customers travelling from Sweden to Asia guaranteeing shortest routes to several destinations with a modern eco-efficient fleet. This appropriate location of the airline hub also translates to less CO2 emissions and considerable timesaving while the customer is flying to right direction when tak-ing a long haul flight to Asia.

Based on the data, Finnair’s environmental responsibility in general does not provide the kind of value proposition that would make the Swedish pas-sengers to pay more about their air travel. However, indirect payment as the study showed, through Finnair Plus FFP the company could provide added value to the environmentally conscious loyalty customers. Firstly, Finnair should find attractive partners from the causes associated with nature conserva-tion to which their FFP members could donate their award points. They should also develop a mechanism where environmentally conscious loyalty customers could automatically donate all, or some fraction of their award points to causes associated with nature conservation. Secondly, they should also investigate possibilities to enable the donated award points to be used for carbon offsetting.

The possibility to transfer the customer’s award points to the company’s Emis-sion Trading Scheme could be an interesting opportunity worth investigating.

Finally, when considering the current awarding system, it rewards the custom-ers who fly the most miles. For instance, an airline passenger maximizing his FFP (mileage) award points benefits from transferring in Copenhagen instead of Helsinki when flying to Asia. This should be taken into account when re-structuring the mileage award points in the future. An environmentally respon-sible act from an airline would be to reward their customers for flying the shortest route.

Again, referring to the Swedish air travelers’ reported preference to fly with modern fleet and their valuation regarding clean and fresh aircraft interi-ors, the new eco-efficient Airbus A350 XWB aircraft that entered the fleet in Oc-tober 2015 could offer a value proposition for Finnair. The new aircraft could offer Finnair a possibility to internalize the incremental cost of the new

eco-efficient technology in higher airfares. Although this would most likely be pos-sible only during the first months of operations when the aircraft’s novelty val-ue would still be high.